For Betty's sake

The power of family sees an Allentown woman through five kidney transplants. She's one of only six people in the world to have received that many donor kidneys.

February 23, 2003|By Ann Wlazelek Of The Morning Call

Inside, 30 older men and women sit in recliners, tubes running from their arms to the artificial kidney machines and back. Some are asleep for the hourslong treatment. Some read. One client talks on a cell phone.

"You look great!" says nurse Barbara Schrantz. She's known Betty since she was in high school. She attended Betty's 21st birthday party and wedding. "You look younger," she says.

Social worker Jerry McAffee asks how Andrew is doing since the transplant. He knows him by name.

Faith Dunlap, director of nursing, envelops Betty, thrilled to see her doing so well. The average age of her clients is 68. Only 2 percent to 3 percent get transplants.

"It's good for them to see you up and about," she says.

Outside, Betty stops and reflects on the years she spent at this center and others. The staff is like family, but the treatments not always kind.

1981

Second transplant

Betty was a junior at Allen High School when she first went on dialysis. She attended classes in the morning, received treatments in the afternoon.

On weekends, school friends invited her to drive the circuit looking for boys or to sneak some Boone's Farm wine at a park. Instead, she stayed home and helped her father garden or mother cook. She told friends she was too tired or sick but often avoided others on purpose.

"Inside, I was thinking, I will never be like everybody else," Betty said.

The treatments gave her more energy but took an emotional toll.

"You'd meet people and they would die," she said. "You'd meet people and they would die."

A woman named Anna showed signs of serious illness, turning yellow with jaundice before dying. Others just wouldn't show up, the empty recliners a grim indicator of what transpired.

The teenager assumed the others died because they were older and sicker. Then a younger girl didn't make it. Staffers assured Betty she'd be OK since she was older when she started dialysis.

To prepare her for treatment and frequent needle sticks, doctors created a bigger blood vessel by stitching together an artery and vein in her left forearm. The connection, or fistula, caused increased blood flow and expanded vein that bulged under her skin. Embarrassed, Betty wore long sleeves to hide it.

Sticking needles into the vessel to draw out blood hurt at first, then the pain lessened. In treatment, a tube carried her "dirty" blood to the coils of a machine, which removed toxins. Another returned "clean" blood to her arm.

Early on, the method was not sterile. Betty used her right arm to mix dialysis solution in a large plastic tub. The equipment proved faulty, too. More than once, coils exploded, splattering Betty's blood on the center ceiling and floor.

Sick much of her senior year, Betty needed a tutor to graduate. She had a boyfriend -- her older brother Cliff's best friend -- but didn't go to her prom or pick up her diploma at graduation.

Betty was on dialysis for seven years after the first transplant failed. The time proved tumultuous. Her parents split up, her older siblings moved out. She took up smoking.

Dialysis technology kept improving, but the treatments wore her down. She tired more off the machine than on. She had seizures from a low blood-cell count and risked hepatitis from multiple transfusions.

Without a working kidney, she stopped growing. Unable to eat dairy products, potatoes and most fruits, she grew weaker and thinner. At her height, she should have weighed 110 pounds. Instead, she weighed less than 80.

After high school, Betty's dialysis schedule appealed to her even less. Instead of three hours each weekday, it was five hours three days a week. More times than she'd like to recall, she showed up at the dialysis center in high heels and drunk after an all-night binge.

"Wake me up when I'm done," she'd tell nurse Schrantz.

Out of the blue, on May 23, 1981, Hahnemann's transplant coordinator called to offer a kidney from an unidentified person who died. "You have a half hour to decide," the nurse said.

Fed up with dialysis, Betty opted for a second transplant.

She was weeks away from her 23rd birthday, older and more emotionally prepared. However, kidney No. 2 failed like the first -- before she could leave the hospital.

This time, Betty knew what was happening. Riding with an orderly in an elevator to her room after a test, she felt the same sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen that she experienced the first time.

She doubled over in her wheelchair, screaming.

"It felt as if something burst," she told a doctor before being rushed back into the operating room.

"We could try to fix it," a surgeon offered.

"No! Take it out," Betty said. "I can't take the pain."

Without a functioning kidney, she returned to dialysis.

Tackling the to-do list

It's a Tuesday morning in November, not Cliff Kemmerer's usual day for visiting Betty. The 69-year-old is preparing his daughter's kitchen, covering the table and moving chairs to the dining room.